Keeping the house clean... What a CHORE!

I have made many an attempt to keep our house clean... this has proven difficult because I am not usually an organized person, I am just learning to be. This means that I have to retrain myself and my children. Here are my latest attempts to do so with a houes full of six children under the age of 18, and one, soon to be two adults...

Below you will see the chart that hangs on our fridge this week. It's a format I made up and each week I reprint another one with different dates and people for each job.

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Shared Responsibilities (switched every 2 weeks): 10-25 to 11-8

Jesse *Washing Dishes – Daily, Keep sink empty of dirty dishes, be available for after meal cleanup

Savannah *Sweeping Downstairs Carpet – Th, Sat, *Use Windex or natural spray to clean downstairs bathroom sink and toilet – Fridays

Aaron*Sweeping Upstairs Carpet – Th, Sat, *Use Windex or natural spray to clean upstairs bathroom sink and toilet – Fridays

Travis *Sweeping/Mopping Kitchen/Bathrooms – Th, Sat, *Clean Showers – Fri

Jaidyn  *Take out trash bags to big brown can, and help Nathan keep all floors clean.

Nathan *Keep all toys off of downstairs floors and in toy boxes

*Older 4 kids, do your own laundry – you are responsible for having clean clothing.

Everyone:

*Throw away all of your trash

*Rinse the dishes you eat on, and put in the sink as soon as you are done eating

*Do NOT eat anywhere other than the kitchen or the dining room table… these rules are to keep our house free of bugs and mice! And the carpets clean.

*Keep your rooms clean: i.e., nothing on the floor, beds made every morning, and everything in its place.

Warning:

The shirking* of these responsibilities will result in the loss of privileges: meaning time with friends, computer, TV, and anything else any of your parents think is necessary.

               REWARD

However, being responsible and doing your daily work without reminder, will reward you with more freedom, more privileges, and your $$ Allowance $$.

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Today I am hoping to inspire my kids further through a couple of different methods. I hope to imprint their memory with the importance of this issue through doing an activity together, and to remind them of the kinds of issues you have when you do not clean through the content of said activity. The chore chart above and the $2/week allowance has done more than all of the nagging I have done in my life to keep us on track. I am hungry for a new level of clean, and hope to inspire the kids towards it as well. I just googled "make your own crossword puzzle", came up with http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/CrissCrossSetupForm.asp , and had fun making this reminder!

Keeping the House Clean

Across

2. showers collect this every day

4. Mom washed the what this morning?

5. Keeping a house clean is a what on dirt?

6. Cleaning is

8. People didn't pick up their candy

11. Do you want to ? in the grimy shower?

12. Everything naturally turns to this

13. Let's keep our house

14. if this is everywhere, so are mites

Down

1. ALL what? need swept EVERY DAY

3. Mom picked up tons of ? stuff

7. Mom also did this

8. Will you get some this ?

9. toilets collect waste daily

10. is what Mom should have been doing

11. Do you want to sit on a ? toilet?

13. is what you get for doing a good job

17 of 19 words were placed into the puzzle.

Created by Puzzlemaker at DiscoveryEducation.com